There are “sanctuary cities,” places which, as a matter of local policy, have chosen to be less than cooperative with federal requests to hold undocumented aliens who come into their clutches. Usually, this means that a person arrested for a violation of law will not be held on an immigration detainer after he would otherwise be released.
There are a few reasons why a local government would want to do this. The first is financial. Holding people until the ICE shows up to take them is expensive. They still need to be housed and fed in custody, and ICE is busy. It may show up today or a month from today. Or never. It’s not like the local sheriff can call ICE and order them to get their butts over to pick up their prisoners.
The second is that feds and locals don’t get along. The feds are snotty elites to the locals, and the locals have their own jobs to do, like stopping murders and mean twits that hurt their feelings. The feds’ “desire” for the locals to do their job for them isn’t at the top of the local law enforcement priority list.
The third is that some cities have taken an actual position in conflict with federal immigration policy, such that they choose not to cooperate, not to be complicit in the continued incarceration and deportation of people they don’t believe deserve to be treated in such a way. This is the principled sanctuary, where a city will affirmatively decide that it will not be complicit in federal conduct with which it disagrees. It can’t stop the feds from being the feds, but it doesn’t have to help.
Does this make it a “sanctuary city”? Well, the name implies more than reality offers. No city can offer sanctuary, protection, against the feds. The feds can sweep in and nab whomever they find in violation of federal law, even if the locals in the sanctuary city would prefer otherwise. They don’t get a vote, and the local cops aren’t going to take up arms to protect undocumented aliens from seizure. There will be no stand-off to provide sanctuary.
To add a level of infantile silliness to the mess, now colleges are claiming to be “sanctuary campuses,” as if they too get to pick and choose what laws of the United States apply to them. There has not yet, as far as I’m aware, been a campus that has defied ICE entering and seizing anyone based on a violation of immigration law. Should there be, it will be interesting to hear the excuses proffered as to why their sanctuary campus was violated and why puppy rooms must be built to soothe the sad students left behind.
But none of this seems to recognize a rather significant detail. ICE is not an invading army of a foreign sovereign. It’s our guys, doing the work Congress and the president has charged them to do. And before any fool utters Trump, Obama deported more people than the total of all presidents before him, so let’s not wrap ourselves in malarkey about how this is a tsunami of horribles coming. We’ve lived with it for the past 8 years and, outside of a few people truly focused on the very serious, very bad, permutations of immigration law, you didn’t care at all while you were crying over transgender bathrooms.
But with a new guy in town, the Fraternal Order of Police, who surprisingly backed Trump as opposed to Hillary, has called for a reinvigorated approach to immigration enforcement. No one can forget that this was one of the hallmark pledges of the campaign, which fortunately aligned with the Trump Wall-Building Corporation.
While the laundry list includes the expected sort of demands from the police, like ending detente with Cuba (bye, Castro, seeya) until Cuba returns the “cop killers” who went there for “sanctuary,” (yes, see how real sanctuary works?), they curiously included these demands for the first 100 days:
- Impose a restriction on some or all Federal aid and grant programs to “sanctuary cities”
- Local and State governments who are “sanctuary cities” and those who may have granted documents (like drivers’ licenses or other photographic identifications) which have names and addresses of persons unlawfully present in the U.S. may purge these databases so that they cannot be shared with the Federal government or law enforcement
- End the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and, using the Federal database to identify those in the U.S. unlawfully, initiate their deportation
What makes these points surprising is that they bear, at most, tangentially on the function of law enforcement, and, to a large extent, do little more than dump additional duties on a group of people who perceive their job as too difficult already. Who wants more problems? Who wants more to do, especially when it doesn’t address the issues that concerns them.
Are cops just offended by the “unlawfulness” of cities, maybe universities, that openly defy the law? There’s a ton of significant issues wrapped up in immigration law, most of which people fail to grasp. From birthright citizenship to the dreaded aggravated felony problem, this isn’t just about people hopping a fence to America so they can steal those really great gardening jobs from 110% red-blooded Americans, whose grandparents came in through Ellis Island, despised second-tier Europeans of their day and are now some of the most vociferous objectors to letting anyone else in now.
But none of this is new. This has been going on for a long time, and has produced more than its share of situations that no rational person wouldn’t call crazy. Think of the one-year-old child of legal immigrants who was busted for personal use of drugs at 17, 30 years ago, but who never naturalized. Send this person back to where? They’ve lived here their entire lives, made one stupid mistake that a lot of red-blooded Americans make, harmed no one, present a threat to no one, and paid a lot of taxes over their life as they contributed to their communities like everybody else.
The problem is that we will never achieve a coherent immigration policy based on reason, crafted to reflect what we, as a nation, would agree upon if only we weren’t so caught up in simplistic, stupid anger and hatred, on the one side, and simplistic, stupid anger and hatred on the other. We are deluged with advocacy articles and posts, and find almost no accurate, neutral substantive information about what the laws are, what they do, how they work. This is due to largely to the fact that nobody seems interested in immigration unless they have an ax to grind, and if they do, they only want to talk about their own ax.
So the FOP showed Trump the love before, and wants its payback now, because the alternative to bad isn’t necessarily good. We will never achieve better, coherent policies as long as they remain wrapped up in ignorance. And a whole lot of very nice, very good people will be the pawns in this crazy game and suffer for it.
This isn’t about Trump. This is about us. This is about interest groups like the FOP capitalizing on public ignorance. We should have done better before. We didn’t. That doesn’t mean we have to do worse now. It starts with all of us trying to be a lot less ignorant and angry about the immigration laws and issues.
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Scott: I thought the most compelling reason why a local government might want to be a Sanctuary City would be to encourage a healthy relationship between immigrant populations and local government. If an immigrant population knows that local police are likely to engage federal customs on undocumented people, then members of that immigrant population are much less likely to call law enforcement where appropriate, reasoning things like: “Perhaps that shoplifter Jean Valjean is undocumented; he deserves to be punished, but does not deserve to be deported, it’s better to do nothing than to tear the community apart.”
That doesn’t really fit in any of your three categories, but I think it’s an important rationale to consider.
This falls under the third reason, but is wrapped up in the sort of rhetoric that appeals to Jill Stein voters. Flowery rhetoric makes people feel all warm and fuzzy, and costs nothing. But if local governments really gave a damn about “healthy relationships,” they would start with their treatment of minority citizens, such as not killing them just in case or grossly disproportionately arresting them to make their numbers. When they stop that, they may give a damn about “illegals.” But if they put a pink bow on undocumented aliens, it makes a subset of the population feel better. Since it costs nothing, why not?
I have to respectfully push back on this. In my neighborhood both the mayor and the police chief have stated on the record that the sanctuary policy is important for effective municipal, police, and judicial administration, essentially for the reasons Mr. Hawkinson laid out above.
I’m skeptical of this, but these folk are important and high-falutin’ officials. They have the backing of most of the city council, and probably a solid majority of the populace. Perhaps in our little corner of the country this is (locally) the best policy. It’s an important question, and one that’s going to sizzle for the next few years. I hope our host will give a better analysis that this facile post.
This “facile” post? Ouch. There are many subparts to the principled rationale, more aligned with dealing with the negative consequences and costs of undocumented aliens being outside the realm of government control than love, though the populace may prefer the love story because that saves them from thinking too hard or worrying about effective budgetary constraints. How much you believe the flowery rhetoric is up to you.
Edit: The NY Times today has a story about how Dem mayors in major cities will fight Trump and remain sanctuary cities. Where do you think the 2.5 million people deported under Obama came from? Bumfuck, Iowa?
It’s in their political interest to appear all tough and liberal against Trump, but if the feds pull funding (because it is still illegal, because that’s what federal law provides), we’ll see how much the politicians really love them when they start shutting down public services for lack of funding.
SCAAP (State criminal alien assistance program) is an example of the county sheriffs saying if you want our help in enforcing federal immigration laws you will have to pay us.
The FOP want local cops enforcing immigration law? Sorry, no. I want my local cops enforcing the everyday local stuff, like murders, rapes, burglaries, etc. If they arrest someone who is here illegally for those crimes, then notify the Feds, but don’t go out of the way looking for immigration violations.
Having local cops push hard on immigration violations would likely hurt enforcement of other crimes, as illegals(I’m such a bad person for using that term – how can a human be illegal) disappear when cops show up looking for witnesses, rather than sticking around to point out the actual bad guys.
I don’t know that the cops have any interest in being involved, and can’t imagine why they would want extra duties.
“I don’t know that the cops have any interest in being involved … ”
Money (not jeopardizing that sweet, sweet Federal graft)
“… and can’t imagine why they would want extra duties.”
Power (having even more means to exert their authority)
It’s really not that hard.
Stop taking drugs. It just makes you write stupid things.
I don’t take drugs. Only a real scumbag would “rip off unfortunate souls of their hard-earned drugs.” Puuhleeeze.
My generosity is unappreciated again.
During the hunt for the DC Snipers, there was this unsubstantiated rumor they were in a white van. A dragnet swooped down on two hapless Hispanic house painters who had stopped at a pay phone. ICE deported them. Film at 11.
THEN, and only then, the cops [LOTS of them, from Agencies A through Z, in 2 states, 5 counties and one District….] slapped their collective foreheads “DUH” and realized that a legion of potential tipsters would never ever drop a dime if they saw anything. Suddenly there was a media blitz trying to convince everyone that “No, we won’t call inmigración…” If it was not so serious, it would have been laughable.
Cool story bro.
I see what you did there.